Menu

Tux Warrior: IPv6 Tunneling

Anyone who read my previous blog, ‘Because Windows Wouldn’t’ will know that I have retreated back to safe territory and am waging the war from my Linux box. Long live the Tux Warrior!

To become a HE Certified Administrator, we need to pass a few (supposedly simple) tasks. The first of these is getting our machine IPv6 capable. There are a number of different tools available to us, but the general consensus is that Gogo is the easiest way to go. The key to this is that Gogo is a tunneling client that will knock its way through any number of NATs and allow you to reach the IPv6 world.

So let’s get to it, using Ubuntu 12.04, Quantal Quetzal:

Open a command terminal and install Gogo (miredo works just as easily):

$ sudo apt-get install gogoc

This will install and run. There is no need to register at gogo6.com, and no need to authenticate. It is a simple plug-and-play game (the best sort!). Once finished you will see that you have an IPv6 over UDP tunnel:

TESTIT!!!For me, this is the critical part. First time around, I bowled right into HE’s Certs and ended up having to wait 3 days for their DNS to refresh. Just so frustrating! The Explorer test isn’t critical, there is no DNS settings to worry about. But I warn you now, I went into the Enthusiast and Administrator Certs without the DNS settings quite right, and had to wait 3 long frustrating days. So test it! Make sure it works before you go through the HE certs.

Test it in your terminal:

$ ifconfig

$ ip addr

$ ping6 ipv6.google.com

Test it at http://ipv6-test.com/:

If you like, you can now go and pass the Explorer Cert 🙂

Hurrah! We are now IPv6 capable, and hooked into the enormous world of IPv6 internet. It is worth pointing out that we have created a tunnel through the IPv4 connection, and effectively have a dual stack IPv4 / IPv6. One day we might be able to have standalone IPv6. But for now, this works, it’s effective and it’s awesome!